In July of 1997 my parents and grandparents went through a flood so terrible it was named the Millennial Flood, as the water levels surpassed any recorded in history.

I did not live through the flood, so the series is a personal retelling that sits between the historical and imagined. I draw directly from the testimonies of my family and other flood survivors to reconstruct the flood as a myth that quickly abandons documentary realism to embrace the surreal logic of trauma and memory.

The exhibition space itself becomes an extension of this artistic narrative. The walls are painted with a high-water mark—an imagined waterline that represents the idea that the exhibition itself has been flooded. Although Western art has directly participated in the progression of the Anthropocene, no space will be spared by the flood, no matter its cultural significance. Like the paintings themselves, this flood mark serves as both a literal and figurative warning, suggesting that the rising waters are not just a historical memory, but are becoming an ever-looming future reality as climate change progresses.

Last year, in June of 2024, the water levels in Poland surpassed those of 1997, ending the assumption that a flood of this magnitude was a once-in-a-millennium occurrence. What is necessary is that instead of imagining the end of the world in the future, we recognise that we are already living through the end of the world as we know it. We have officially entered the Anthropocene, as disasters force us to extend our scales and stretch our concepts of the world yet again.

I think that at this moment in history, it is crucial for Western art to make amends for centuries of direct participation in the progression of the Anthropocene. As Rachael DeLue points out, European landscape art was a crucial tool in the realisation of colonial and imperial projects, but it has the potential to escape its history and show us the world in a way that reality cannot. I try to make work that opposes the dominant narratives about climate disasters, that shows the scarred landscapes with real compassion and engagement.

Natalia Bocian (born 2000) is a Polish painter, based in Glasgow in Scotland.

She graduated from architecture in 2022 with a BArch before moving on to study painting at Glasgow School of Art. Her works are frequently based on images from the bygone era, used as a distancing device to reflect on the current political and social climate.